{"id":1220,"date":"2026-07-23T07:12:27","date_gmt":"2026-07-23T07:12:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valerieocallaghan.com\/?p=1220"},"modified":"2026-07-23T07:12:27","modified_gmt":"2026-07-23T07:12:27","slug":"the-silence-that-not-everyone-can-sustain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/valerieocallaghan.com\/en\/el-silencio-que-no-todos-pueden-sostener\/","title":{"rendered":"The silence that not everyone can sustain"},"content":{"rendered":"

Meditation, performance, and the physiological limits of an imported practice<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A woman explains in therapy that she has been meditating for twenty minutes every morning for eight months and feels worse. She has increased the time, tried another app, and booked a weekend retreat. No one warned her that stillness can open things up. No one asked her what was going on inside before asking her to close her eyes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article addresses that missing question.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What was left behind in customs<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meditation arrived in the West with very little baggage. It entered as a technique, separate from the ethical framework, the community of practice, the teacher who observed the student for years, and the worldview that gave it meaning. In Buddhism, formal practice is based on a three-part structure: ethical conduct, concentration, and insight. The West imported the second part and left the other two untouched.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The result was a portable, measurable technique, suitable for clinical trials and mobile applications. It was also a technique without context: no one to accompany what emerges, no community to support the crisis, no criteria to distinguish the discomfort that is part of the process from that which indicates it's best to stop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Purser (2019) called this phenomenon McMindfulness, and her critique points to something precise: a practice that originally questioned the conditions of suffering ended up functioning as a tool to better tolerate them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The self that returns through the back door<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Buddhism upholds anatta, the absence of a substantial and permanent self. The practice aims to observe the construction of the self in real time, to see how it assembles moment by moment with sensations, perceptions, and mental habits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Western version reversed the direction of the movement. Today, meditation is used to truly know oneself, to find one's essence, to discover who one really is. The practice of letting go of the ego became a project of consolidating it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This investment responds to the psychic structure of the contemporary subject, who needs a defined, optimizable and presentable self.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Calmness as performance<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Han (2010) describes the performance subject as someone who no longer obeys an external master because he has become his own foreman. He enthusiastically exploits himself and calls that exploitation freedom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meditation fits into this scheme with unsettling ease. It's measured in streaks of consecutive days, quantified in accumulated minutes, compared to the average of other users, and integrated into the wellness program of the very company that caused the burnout. The worker learns to regulate their nervous system to tolerate conditions that remain unchanged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There, the practice changes its function: it makes bearable what it previously called into question.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The physiological cost<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Closing your eyes, remaining still, and directing your attention inwards are three instructions that require something prior: a nervous system with a safety margin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Porges (2011) describes neuroception, the continuous and automatic process by which the organism assesses whether the environment is safe before any conscious decision. When neuroception signals danger, immobility activates ancient defenses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a person with a traumatic history, stillness can function as a threat signal. The body has learned that remaining still precedes something. And attention directed toward internal sensations can suddenly unleash what the system has been holding back with enormous effort. Van der Kolk (2014) formulates this with clinical clarity: interoception is the path of recovery and also the path of flooding, depending on the state of the system at that moment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What the data says<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Research on adverse effects exists, and it is much more robust than its absence in public discourse suggests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Britton et al. (2021) systematically assessed participants in mindfulness-based programs. 831 participants reported at least one meditation-related experience, 581 participants described experiences of negative valence, and 371 participants reported a negative impact on their functioning. The authors also point out a crucial methodological detail: open-ended questions underestimate prevalence by approximately 701 participants, which explains why so many studies find low figures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Goldberg, Lam, Britton and Davidson (2021) worked with a population sample in the United States and found functional impairment attributed to practice in 7.1% of the participants, moderate in 2.3% and severe in 0.2%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These figures describe a practice with real effects, and every practice with real effects has contraindications. Britton (2019) frames it as a matter of dosage and adjustment: the useful question is which practice, for whom, in what quantity, and at what time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Practice with your own judgment<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

None of this invalidates meditation. What I propose is to return to him the three things he lost when he crossed the border.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first is gradation. A nervous system with no margin for error begins with practices that anchor the senses: open eyes, spatial orientation, contact with the ground, slow movement, attention to the body's limits. Inner silence comes later, when the organism has the necessary security to sustain it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second is support. Practicing alone with an app leaves the person without anyone to acknowledge what's happening. Someone with training needs to be available.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The third dimension is the collective one. Individual calm reaches its limit when discomfort stems from shared conditions: impossible workdays, unattainable housing, persistent precarity. Regulating one's own nervous system provides room to act upon these conditions, and this room is either seized or squandered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That, for me, is the practice of sovereignty: using the calm that is obtained to see more clearly what is happening around, and deciding from there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sources and references<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Britton, WB (2019). Can mindfulness be too much of a good thing? The value of a middle way. Current Opinion in Psychology, 28, 159-165. Willoughby Britton is an associate professor of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University and directs the Clinical and Affective Neuroscience Laboratory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Britton, W.B., Lindahl, JR, Cooper, D.J., Canby, N.K., & Palitsky, R. (2021). Defining and Measuring Meditation-Related Adverse Effects in Mindfulness-Based Programs. Clinical Psychological Science, 9(6), 1185-1204.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Goldberg, SB, Lam, SU, Britton, WB, and Davidson, RJ (2021). Prevalence of meditation-related adverse effects in a population-based sample in the United States. Psychotherapy Research, 32(3), 291-305. Richard J. Davidson directs the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Han, B.-C. (2010). The Burnout Society. Herder. Byung-Chul Han is a philosopher and essayist, and a professor at the Berlin University of the Arts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Porges, S. W. (2011). The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions, Attachment, Communication, and Self-Regulation. Norton. Stephen Porges is a professor of Psychiatry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Purser, R. (2019). McMindfulness: How Mindfulness Became the New Capitalist Spirituality. Repeater Books. Ronald Purser is a professor of Management at San Francisco State University and an ordained Buddhist teacher.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Van der Kolk, B. (2014). The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. Viking. Bessel van der Kolk is a psychiatrist and professor at Boston University School of Medicine.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Meditaci\u00f3n, rendimiento y los l\u00edmites fisiol\u00f3gicos de una pr\u00e1ctica importada Una mujer explica en consulta que lleva ocho meses meditando veinte minutos cada ma\u00f1ana y que se siente peor. Ha aumentado el tiempo, ha probado otra aplicaci\u00f3n, ha reservado un retiro de fin de semana. Nadie le advirti\u00f3 de que la quietud puede abrir cosas. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-presencia-conciencia-y-despertar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/valerieocallaghan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/valerieocallaghan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/valerieocallaghan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valerieocallaghan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valerieocallaghan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1220"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/valerieocallaghan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1220\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1221,"href":"https:\/\/valerieocallaghan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1220\/revisions\/1221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/valerieocallaghan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valerieocallaghan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/valerieocallaghan.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}